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Swiss Quantum Shows Its Strengths to the World
UNESCO has declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum to mark 100 years of quantum mechanics, and to foreground new quantum technologies moving from the lab into society. The Swiss quantum community, including Swissnex, organised a Swiss Quantum Week in Geneva in October 2025 to mark the occasion. A series of events highlighted the best of Swiss quantum education, research, innovation, and science diplomacy.
09.12.2025
On October 13, Swissnex organised the Swissnex Quantum Summit, a one-day global conference hosted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) at Campus Biotech. The summit focused on quantum ecosystem building and international collaboration, attracting more than 100 participants from 16 countries. Researchers and start-ups, government and corporations representatives came together to discuss how to accelerate quantum technologies from lab to economy, and to develop responsible quantum technologies for the good of society.
“By convening the international quantum community in Geneva, we aim to unite Switzerland’s world-class quantum ecosystem with global innovation hubs — not just to talk about possibility, but to contribute towards the strengthening of the global architecture of the quantum economy," said Philippe Roesle, CEO of Swissnex in Boston and New York, the lead organiser of the summit.
Collaboration across borders
Through flash talks, discussion panels, and conversation cafés, participants were encouraged to collaborate across sectors, fields, and borders to identify bottlenecks in quantum technology development and find ways to overcome them. “Usually when you go to a conference, it’s more about technology, and specific technical problems,” said Gregoire Ribordy, CEO of Geneva-based ID Quantique. “Here it’s about building ecosystems, which is interesting, and there’s not so many places where this topic is discussed.”
The Swissnex Quantum Summit also gave the stage to key Swiss actors, such as the Swiss Quantum Commission, with remarks by its President Nicolas Gisin, as well as a preview of an upcoming Swiss Quantum Strategy by Prof. Wolfgang Tittel and Dr. Andreas Masuhr. Over a dozen Swiss researchers and start-ups also delivered ‘flash talks’ and engaged in discussion panels.
“Switzerland has this beautiful culture of collaboration, but also amazing world-class research,” said conference speaker Dr. Megan Lee, Managing Director of Quantum City in Calgary, Canada. “I really love the fact there’s a strong focus on applied science, moving the science out of the lab, into the real world.”
On the day of the Swissnex Quantum Summit, Swissnex also launched an updated version of its Swiss quantum mapping and factsheet, Switzerland: A Hub for Quantum. Developed in collaboration with the Swiss Quantum Initiative, the map featured 40 key players in Switzerland working on quantum research, innovation, or diplomacy.
Switzerlands quantum industry is growing
The Swissnex Quantum Summit launched a busy week of quantum events in Geneva. Quantum Industry Day in Switzerland (QIDiS) on October 14 showcased the growth of quantum industries in Switzerland and beyond, featuring over 600 registered participants from 41 countries. The yearly QIDiS event has grown in size and stature since the inaugural edition in Zurich in 2018, and is currently organised by a consortium of Swiss quantum industry actors, and supported by the Swiss Quantum Initiative.
Swiss Quantum Week also brought together policy actors at the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipation (GESDA) Summit, October 15–17, to explore how cutting-edge science can be translated into global impact, with a special track on quantum technologies supported by the Open Quantum Institute. Meanwhile, at the three-day hackathon organised by QAI Ventures (a venture capital and accelerator dedicated to advancing global quantum technology innovation) on the CERN campus from October 17–19, students and young professionals competed to solve quantum challenges aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Swiss Quantum Week 2025 closed out with EPFL’s Journée de la Quantique, which invited the general public to discover the quantum world through interactive demonstrations and workshops.
Special federal investments in quantum
The activities of Swiss Quantum Week reflect the strategic importance of quantum in the Swiss research and innovation landscape. Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) has made special investments into quantum through the Swiss Quantum Initiative, with around CHF 100 million dedicated to quantum research and innovation from 2023-2028. This commitment comes on top of other funding instruments such as the National Centers for Competence in Research and grants awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation which are bedrocks of funding for all types of research, including in quantum. Swissnex has supported the internationalisation of quantum activities through its summit in Geneva which followed a successful summit in 2023 in Lausanne, and Swiss-US and Swiss-Japanese conferences abroad in 2022 and 2024, along with many other events across the global Swissnex network.
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